Vancouver’s Sea Level Rise Framework in the News

We know that it is the middle of summer, and that winter storms and coastal flooding are not top of mind…but we are glad to say that they were top of mind at this week’s City of Vancouver council meeting. On Tuesday, Council unanimously passed a staff report that provided an update on sea level rise activities within the City. We are proud to say that we contributed to the most recent phase of work by developing a Sea Level Rise Planning Framework along with Compass Resource Management. This framework outlines a method to support the City on when and where to take action on sea level rise. We aren’t too proud, however, to admit that this might have drained our brains just a little (or maybe quite a lot) for this project; working in flood risk in a changing climate is challenging!.

The framework considers the dynamic nature of risk in the City with climate change. Working with the City, we developed initial risk tolerances and thresholds for various assets (public infrastructure, parks, etc.) that are then combined with an understanding of changing risk over time and space to define when and where flood mitigation efforts should be in place. This information is then considered in the context of what options might be available to mitigate sea level rise impacts (developed in Phase 2 of the project), and how long it will take to implement these options, to understand when we need to start working on detailed mitigation plans. We are excited to see this out in the world and guiding one of the leading cities in climate mitigation and adaptation.

Despite it being the middle of summer – there has been a wee bit of press on the report. We’ve summarised some of it here: